Mmmmm Sushi! We love sushi with a capital L-O-V-E. Foodie Baby and Picky Princess can out-sashimi Sexy Husband any day. I’m a vegetable only sushi kind of girl, which I know isn’t technically real sushi, but nevertheless, sushi is an easy, healthy, vegetarian(my way) meal. I have some friends who lived in Nashville for a while and they said they could both binge on great sushi in Nashville for $12. That’s pretty incredible. I think of it as a pretty cheap night out because we can feed our family of 4 sushi lovers for under $40.

BUT…Sushi is a really fun and easy thing to make at home! It seems intimidating and involved, but it’s really not and I am going to show you how. It is so delicious fresh, you can fill it with all sorts of things, and you will definitely impress your guests. This is also a really easy meal to have your kids help you with!

Here is your step by step how to:

make the rice

1. Make the Rice – I use a rice cooker, but of course you can do it in a pot. In these pictures, I used white sushi rice. You can buy brown sushi rice which also tastes great. You cannot use regular rice because it doesn’t stick. I did just see a recipe for quinoa sushi somewhere, so give that a try too! You want to make the rice and then put it in a bowl so that it cools down enough that you can touch it without burning your fingers.

prep the veg

2. Prep the vegetables – thinly slice long pieces of cucumber, red pepper, and avocado, or any other things you’d like to put in the middle. Shredded carrots are nice in vegetarian rolls as well. Set aside.

set it up

3. Set it up. Place a bamboo sushi roller(super cheap from almost any grocery or kitchen store) on the counter and place one sheet of seaweed on the roller. With your hands sprinkle some rice on the sushi wrapper and press it down. You want to not make it very thick but you do want to cover most of the seaweed. If you make it too thick, the pieces are hard to eat in one bite. I like to leave a little spare space of seaweed at the end because it makes it easier to seal. At the bottom of the sushi roll, line up the vegetables. Using the roller, tightly roll up the seaweed. Set aside the roll. Repeat with all your ingredients.

rolls

4. Once you have rolls, use a serrated knife and GENTLY saw back and forth through the sushi. Each roll should be cut into about 10 pieces. This makes them bite-size. Place them on a platter. You can eat the ugly end pieces as a snack.

voila

Tip: Usually I make 2 cups of sushi rice. This equals about 10 rolls which is a LOT, but usually I make it as a snack for a group of people. Yesterday I made 1.5 cups of sushi rice and it was about 6 rolls which was an entire dinner for the 4 of us.